Oooooo-- ladies and gentlemen, happy valentines day! I thought I'd start off with expressing my warm appreciation to everyone who has been brilliant in helping each other with the relic grind and collecting all the new Blue Mage spells-- I'm having a blast with my new level 70 Blue Mage and it has been exceptional in the Rabanastre/Mhachi runs-- Amelia has been using her Dancer as well!
Now on to the main topic--Amelia and I were discussing the new relic process steps and the gist eventually revolved around their usability within the early stages of the next expansion, Endwalker. This inevitably gave rise to us --yet again-- speculating on the second new job and she rightly suggested that I make it a new blog post. Indeed... yes indeed, she always has all the brilliant ideas.
However, I bid you indulge me... take a moment and heed my thoughts on this, guys-- I just had an epiphany-- what about VOIDMAGE as the new second job? They were the mages of Mhachi from the fifth astral era and after more than a week of careful thinking and reviewing everything from the announcement showcase, I'm almost giddy with excitement that this might be a possibility.
First item that got me thinking was the new Endwalker's logo
See that ship headed to the moon? Why the heck did it suddenly remind me of the Tales of Mhachi 24-man raids from Heavensward? Perhaps it is because the interior architecture of that tower in the trailer (with Fandaniel and Zenos) looked expressively very similar to the ones within the Void Ark raids. Then of course, there were the official new concept images of Endwalker which were tweeted online and then my blood really got racing...
Then I really want digging-- re-watching lores, replaying the Void Ark raids for my relic runs and then researching my FFXIV books-- then I remembered. According to the wonderful pages of my Eorzean Encylopaedia (pages 30 to 35) the lore explains that the Mhachi civilization evolved within the Yafaem Saltmoor which is just northwest of the Mor Dhona area-- and they were the originators of the voidmage job-class. By the way, the below Mhachi and Dun Scaithe themed artwork by Joelin Tan was just so beautifully well done, I had to place it here... (visit his site and support his excellent work!)
Back to the tale-- The Mhachi's aggression during the War of the Magi in the fifth era was the backbone of the Tales of the Mhachi storyline... and thus, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place for me-- it makes sense that this whole tale might be revisted during the next expansion, and it so, voidmage might be the candidate as the second job class to be released with Sage.
At the time, Amdapor was the main dominant power of the six nations of that era and they had formed their civilization upon he foundation of white magic. The Mhachi on the other hand were a much smaller and under developed nation natil one of their most natable mages at the time-- Shatotto-- discovered the intricacies of controlling voidsent and black magic; thus, establishing a military comprising of powerful void mages.
The void mages of Mhachi not only knew black magic but also expanded their knowledge of summoning void sent beings from the Void (which was a parallel universe)-- these were crucial to their initial success during the War of the Magi with the white mages of Amdapor, and in unleashing the plague that decimated most of the Lalafallean majority citizenry of Nym.
I also remember reading up that the Mhachi also developed a clever means of protecting themselves from the voidsent they controlled-- this protective element was called the "Nullstone", and it secured within the great pyramid within their capital-- everybody remember fighting Ozma? Yep, that's the location.
The Nullstone was powerful enough to keep all the voidsent in check and this was crucial so that the Mhachi wouldn't get attcaked by their own "pets" while unleashing them on the other nations as a means to obliterate them, and kept it secure within a great pyramid in the city proper.
Advances in Mhachi sorcery were made for one reason and one reason only: cataclysmic destructive power. And the swiftest─and most dangerous─method of acquiring that power was through the enslavement of voidsent entities. -- Cait Sith
At the onset of the war between Mhachi and Amdapor, the black mages initially had the upper hand by using their vast number of voidsent and their trump card, a very powerful voidsent named Diabolos, to attack Amdapor's capital. The white mages of Amdapur were however saved by utilizing their guardian statues (imbued with white magic)-- see images below-- to fend off the worst of the attack and being able to seal Diabolos beneath their city but not before suffering heavy losses. Eventually, the War of Magi would unleash extremely devastating consequences on Eorzea and it would lead to the six umbral era by means of a massive flood.
The Mhachi-- still arrogant and self-assured about their power-- decided to build a refuge in the skies, called Dun Scaithe and a massive Void Ark which would which they believed was their best method of surviving the Flood. They were confident in using their massive Ark as a means of sustaining their way of life while floating in the skies above (until the floods has subsided) and then use Dun Scaithe as their new base of rebuilding their civilization.
However, their Ark needed a massive amount of void magic to be the main core powering their Ark-- so they hatched an elaborate plan to capture voidsent Shadow Queen Scathach and fifty score voidsent (a thousand) whom were all sealed within the ark to power their invention.
The Void Ark
One of their most prominent mages, High Voidmage Cessair -- who had actually been imprisoned because of her disapproval of the war with Amdapor-- was tasked with leading the new ark. She again expressed reluctance for the whole venture but accepted the task as a means to help save her people. As expected, her fears were eventually confirmed when the seals and wards on the ship gradually started to fray. Some of the voidsent escaped, started wreaking havoc on the ship and tired to free their queen.
As a last ditch effort, Cessair and the fifty (or fifty-three?) void mages on board sacrificed themselves to maintain the seals on the ark. Her familiar-- Cait Sith-- was tasked with keeping watch over the seals imprisoning the Queen and her voidsent within the Ark; a task he has faithfully maintained for over 1,500 years.
The other possible job could be VOID TEMPLAR! This speculation stems from the possibility of the new melee job sharing the strength based gear with Dragoon. However, what about Void Knight? A scythe-wielding Void Knight, Void Templar or Void Master? I admit, "Void Master" does sound a bit awkward, plus I believe a couple games out there already use the "Void Knight" term-- the FFXIV Devs are always adamant about maintaining originality.
However, I do remember one crucial detail from the lore-- before the Garleans absorbed Landis into their empire-- note, Landis was Noah Van Gabranth's original homeland-- one of their cities named Mannatheihwo was home to a company of mage-knights.
So this begs the question-- if were not getting Void Mage, perhaps, just MAYBE, the new melee job could be like a mage-knight who is similar to the RUNE KNIGHT but uses Void spells? But what will it be called?
Wait-- I got it-- VOID MAGE, VOID MASTER, VOID KNIGHT, VOID TEMPLAR. Or simply a TEMPLAR that uses Void based skills-- just like a mage-knight.
*(Rubs his temples in deep thought)*...
So let's summarize: the next job could either be Scythe wielding Void Mage or a scythe-welding Templar "mage-knight" with Void skills. Could be a silly thought, but weirder things have happened.
In conclusion, the above are just my meandering speculations-- I could be on the money or totally off base-- fact is, I had great fun discissiong these with Amelia and I'd like to hear your comments or speculations as well. On that note, I've already began pondering another element of Endwalker-- what comes after the events of 6.0? Perhaps rebuilding Garlemald, Radz-at-Han...or even Rabanastre?
